According to Wikipedia:"In 1999, Dr. Zhiyuan Gong and his colleagues at the National University of Singapore were working with a gene called green fluorescent protein (GFP), originally extracted from a jellyfish, that naturally produced bright green bioluminescence. They inserted the gene into a zebrafish embryo, allowing it to integrate into the zebrafish's genome, which caused the fish to be brightly fluorescent under both natural white light and ultraviolet light."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glofish

If they started making glow in the dark bettas (or rabits, hamsters, birds etc) Would you support it? would you buy it? Or would be horrified?

My personal opinion:
I'm not against genetically modified (GM) animals at all. We have been doing it for decades thats why the wild betta and the domesticated betta are so different. For example, I wouldnt mind buying a betta that has been GM'd to be peaceful with others of its own species. But I believe making glow in the dark animals as novelty items is going a bit too far.

I read the Book Jurassic Park By Michael chricton and despite it being fiction it is really good at highlighting the implications of GM'img animals. For example:

A company creates a GM'd giant betta that glows in the dark > They create patents > They then GM that betta to only be able to eat the company's brand of food, and only live in their company's brand of special "betta water" > They soon become a rich industry.

All this so they can make the most money out of you. And despite all this people will stay pay it because it will be a new novelty item. Thats just my thoughts on it. What do you guys think?

I love GloFish, I plan on getting some. However when I do this it won't be so they can be decor. They'll be pets. If companies start GM'ing animals, PETA, HSUS, and Greenpeace will be knocking their doors down.

To be able to GM an animal to only eat certain food and breathe certain waters is fairly far down the road, and the feds would probably do somthing about this.

Though the concept of GloFish is wrong (which the part that bugs me is that a TM is in their names), it doesn't hurt the fish. It's like making an albino snake, but it just needed some help.

GloFish is (probably) a multimillion dollar industry and will probably not be taken down for a LONG LONG time.

In my eyes, it is a bit unetchical, no matter what the animal, but I don't feel the need to be one of those stark raving mad people ( like PETA). while I think the glofish look interesting, I personally wouldn't buy them seeing as I think they'd look ugly and out of place in a natural tank and that I prefer their unaltered color combos better.:)

To be able to GM an animal to only eat certain food and breathe certain waters is fairly far down the road, and the feds would probably do somthing about this.

I remember the story on Jurassic park found a loophole for that too. I think it was because they were planning on making mini- dinosaurs and selling them as pets. They made the animals lysine (a protein that is normally created by the bodies of organisms) dependent. They took away their ability to make that protein and they instead put that protein in the food. So without their special food dosed with lysine the animals would die. But that never happened because all the dinosaurs went wild and killed everyone. Michael Chricton's novels are amazingly realistic and very well researched.

Anyways when you have a building full of lawyers (and a lot of $$$) you can always find a loophole in the law.

___________________

Glofish are illegal in California - that must be why I have never heard of them...

I remember the story on Jurassic park found a loophole for that too. I think it was because they were planning on making mini- dinosaurs and selling them as pets. They made the animals lysine (a protein that is normally created by the bodies of organisms) dependent. They took away their ability to make that protein and they instead put that protein in the food. So without their special food dosed with lysine the animals would die. But that never happened because all the dinosaurs went wild and killed everyone. Michael Chricton's novels are amazingly realistic and very well researched.

Anyways when you have a building full of lawyers (and a lot of $$$) you can always find a loophole in the law.

___________________

Glofish are illegal in California - that must be why I have never heard of them...

I thought I read glofish were originally being GM'ed to react to certain toxins in the water. They were to glow when the toxins became present to help researchers.Or I could have just had some crazy dream about that being their origin. I can't recall were they thought came from.

I had them and really didn't like them. I felt all of them, as I had 7 in a 10 gallon, were extremely aggresive.

I thought I read glofish were originally being GM'ed to react to certain toxins in the water. They were to glow when the toxins became present to help researchers.Or I could have just had some crazy dream about that being their origin. I can't recall were they thought came from.

I had them and really didn't like them. I felt all of them, as I had 7 in a 10 gallon, were extremely aggresive.

No you were right:"Their goal was to develop a fish that could detect pollution by selectively fluorescing in the presence of environmental toxins. The development of the constantly fluorescing fish was the first step in this process. Shortly thereafter, his team developed a line of red fluorescent zebra fish by adding a gene from a sea coral, and yellow fluorescent zebra fish, by adding a variant of the jellyfish gene. Later, a team of researchers at the National University of Taiwan, headed by Professor Huai-Jen Tsai (蔡懷禎), succeeded in creating a medaka (rice fish) with a fluorescent green color.
The scientists from NUS and businessmen Alan Blake and Richard Crockett from Yorktown Technologies, L.P., a company in Austin, Texas, met and a deal was signed whereby Yorktown obtained the worldwide rights to market the GloFish. At around the same time, a separate deal was made between Taikong, the largest aquarium fish producer in Taiwan, and the Taiwanese researchers to market the green medaka in Taiwan under the name TK-1. In the spring of 2003, Taiwan became the first to authorize sales of a genetically modified organism as a pet. One hundred thousand fish were reportedly sold in less than a month at US$18.60 each. It should be clarified that the fluorescent medaka are not GloFish, as they are not marketed by Yorktown Technologies, but instead by Taikong Corp under a different brand name."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glofish

I don't believe in Genetic Modification when it comes to companion animals. There is NO point in creating a glow in the dark fish. IMO that is disgusting. It is one thing to selectively breed for a trait and cultivate that trait through generations but it is another to pump chemicals into an animal just for the fun of it.

Genetic modification for the greater good (i.e. when applied to battle cancer or attempt to prevent down syndrome or autism) would be an honorable goal to work towards... not messing with nature just because it looks "cool".

Their original goal had good intention behind it, however there are much better ways to detect pollution in water besides turning a fish into a test strip.

I don't believe in Genetic Modification when it comes to companion animals. There is NO point in creating a glow in the dark fish. IMO that is disgusting. It is one thing to selectively breed for a trait and cultivate that trait through generations but it is another to pump chemicals into an animal just for the fun of it.

Genetic modification for the greater good (i.e. when applied to battle cancer or attempt to prevent down syndrome or autism) would be an honorable goal to work towards... not messing with nature just because it looks "cool".

Their original goal had good intention behind it, however there are much better ways to detect pollution in water besides turning a fish into a test strip.

Hearing that changes my views.. if we can send a person to the moon we can create an in-tank water tester that constantly monitors water stats.